A joint application by the regional planning agencies in Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron has won a $4.25 million grant under the President’s Sustainable Communities program.

The money will be used to conduct land-use, housing, environmental, transportation and economic development planning on a region level. You may recall, we wrote about how badly this type of planning is needed in the Cleveland area on this blog before. In fact, I would venture to say, there isn’t a community in the country that needs land use planning more than Cleveland.

So, Akron, Youngstown, Cleveland, let’s have a talk. This is a pretty big opportunity to address the problems of sprawl and urban decay. Are we finally ready to talk honestly about this stuff and put aside parochial interests for the sake of the greater good? The federal government has invested $4.25 million with the confidence that this region has the wisdom to make some smart decisions, as hard as it may be politically.